At 11 pm on July 17, 1984, Jesse Jackson strode to the podium at the Democratic National Convention to deliver a nearly hour-long speech. Many saw his appearance as the high point of an otherwise drab event. Jackson had lost after a bruising presidential primary fight, and the organizers hoped he would use the speech to heal divisions in the party. Instead, Jackson demanded a place in the party’s agenda for progressive policies and his multiracial voting base, which he anointed the Rainbow Coalition. He counseled the Democrats to spread the message that “all of us count and all of us fit somewhere.” And he insisted that if the party advocated reallocating defense spending to building bridges, schools, and hospitals — providing jobs and better services for all — then “the whole nation will come running to us.”

The presidential elections of 1984 and 1988 generally reside in the wastebasket of Democratic Party history, cautionary tales dredged up only to illustrate a dark chapter in the party’s past. Yet looking beyond the November electoral returns to the primary campaigns of Jesse Jackson in those two elections reveals a pivotal moment when the vision and composition of the Democratic Party was very much in flux — and a universalist, social-democratic politics could have won out over the market boosterism, “choice and competition,” and upper-middle-class-centric approach of the Democratic Leadership Council.